


so take the hand offered to you

by Lyre (Lyrecho)



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brief suicidal ideation, Can Be Read As Gen But Is Definitely Intended To Be Pre Romance, Gen, In Which Genis' Affection Gets So Low He Jumps Ship To The Mithos Route, Mithos Lives, Oneshot, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26002000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Lyre
Summary: grip tight, and don't let gogenis wants to saveallof his friends.|Tumblr||Twitter|
Relationships: Genis Sage & Mithos Yggdrasill
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	so take the hand offered to you

Growing up, Genis had never really given thought to how much younger he was than his friends -- it never seemed to bother them, at least, and the dynamic between he, Lloyd and Colette had always _felt_ equal.

That, like so many other things, changed somewhere along the Journey of Regeneration. 

They don’t baby him, but neither is he fully included, like he used to be. Raine makes sense -- she’s always seen him as younger than he really is; to her, he’ll forever be like, three, probably. Kratos makes sense, too, to an extent, because he’s a proper _adult_ adult, and Genis is maybe half his size; it’s probably hard for the man to take him seriously, even though he’s _wrong_ about it.

Lloyd and Colette, though...they both withdraw the further along they get into the journey, which makes sense, but then they meet Zelos and Sheena, and in their own ways, begin to open up again, which _doesn’t._

It doesn’t matter though, because eventually, Genis has Mithos.

And when Mithos comes to him, after everything has fallen down around him and almost every truth had turned out to be a lie, Genis thinks of Lloyd laughing at a stupid joke Zelos had said while subtly sliding between him and his friend, and stares at Mithos’ earnest expression, his outstretched hand.

He takes it.

-x-

Mithos is Yggdrasil, but he is also just _Mithos,_ and at the end of the day, when all possible preparations have been made and all that’s left is to wait and wait and _wait,_ it is Mithos who comes to the chambers that he gave to Genis, Mithos who is tired in body and soul and mind, and Mithos who throws himself dramatically across Genis’ mattress, letting out a long whine into the pillow he scrunches into his face.

“Rough day, huh,” Genis says sympathetically, but can’t help the small smirk.

Mithos must hear it in his voice. He throws the pillow at Genis.

It’s baffling, how one can be so old and yet so young at the same time. Genis knows, intellectually, that Mithos is so old his age is such a large number that Genis literally cannot comprehend fully just how many years he’s lived through --

\-- and yet, when it’s just them, together, it’s like Mithos is the exact age he looks, nothing of the mask of Yggdrasil he dons anywhere about him.

Genis wonders, once, if it’s less that Mithos has aged over the years so much as he’s stagnated, just like the twin worlds, but that’s such a depressing thought that he shoves it deep into the back of his mind and pretends he’d never thought it in existence in the first place. 

“Every day is a rough day,” Mithos mumbles, and snuggles deeper into Genis’ bed. Genis reaches over a hand to gently pat at his hair, consolingly. “...I’m impatient,” Mithos finally admits. “I’m so _tired_ of waiting, and I’m so _close_ this time -- this time will be _it,_ I know it.” He sighs. “It’s nothing to get worked up over, I suppose,” he murmurs. “This will all be over soon.” He smiles brilliantly at Genis, who tries to focus only on Mithos’ face lit up in happiness and hope and the warm fuzzies it ignites inside of him, as he tries to forget the small stabs of guilt he can’t stop himself from being attacked by.

Yes, he thinks. It _will_ all be over soon.

-x-

Once, before Genis had learned that the Mithos he’d become friends with was, yeah, _that Mithos,_ he’d confessed to him that growing up, he’d had a crush on Lloyd.

It had been a sunny, lazy afternoon, and Mithos’ expression had switched from uncomprehending to horrified to gleeful so fast Genis had barely been able to keep up with them. He’d burst out into absolutely evil cackles, doubling over and rolling around on the floor as he gasped for air, and Genis had felt himself slowly but steadily turning a bright, ugly red as Mithos had wheezed out _you have such terrible taste._

“I don’t have a crush on him anymore!” Genis had protested. “And besides, it was really more like, hero worship, than anything, anyway.”

Once Mithos had recovered, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes, he’d shot Genis a look that screamed _yeah, sure, Genis._ “When did you stop having a crush on him, then, if you’re so over it, hmm?”

“I’ll whack you,” Genis said threateningly, and Mithos had only cackled again in response.

“...I dunno,” Genis had finally mumbled. “I thought I got over it ages ago, but then --” he cuts himself off, can’t say it.

He doesn’t have to. Awareness lights up in Mithos’ eyes, and Genis can see the answer _click._

“Ah,” he says, and there’s a certain twist to his lips that Genis, at the time, hadn’t known how to interpret. “Zelos Wilder, huh.”

Genis had groaned, and thrown himself down, flopping onto the floor alongside Mithos.

“...Wow,” his friend had said, finally. “I can’t believe your taste in men is so bad you had a crush on the one guy with worse taste than _you.”_

Once, Genis would have immediately jumped to defend Lloyd, but -- yeah. He can see where Mithos is coming from. It’s _Zelos._

They’d looked at each other then, locking eyes, and Genis can’t remember exactly what emotion he’d seen in Mithos’ face, but whatever it was, it had set him off, and then they’d both been giggling uncontrollably, lying down next to each other.

Genis had been brought back to himself when Mithos’ hand had hesitantly made its way into his. “Jokes aside,” he’d said softly, “I am sorry, you know? It sucks when you like someone who doesn’t like you back.”

Genis had squeezed Mithos’ hand back -- later, weeks later, when Mithos had come for him, wings of unbelievable light arrayed behind him as he’d hovered at Genis’ window, holding out a night-cold hand to him, it had been this moment he’d thought of when Mithos’ fingers had intertwined with his, locking them together like a vice; it had been the memory of the warmth his friend had exuded in this moment that had, truly, led him to take a literal leap of faith out of that window with him.

In the moment itself, though, all Genis is thinking of is reassuring Mithos that his apology is unnecessary.

“Like I told you,” he’d said, “I don’t have a crush on Lloyd anymore.”

Mithos had blinked, and then smiled, soft and shy. “Good to know,” he’d said. “Seems you’re not beyond help after all.”

“I really _will_ whack you, you know!”

-x-

Mithos’ smiles are always so bright Genis always feels like he almost _has_ to look away, for fear they’ll blind him.

This smile, though, is one he can’t look away from.

“It’s time,” he says, and Genis feels something in him sink even as excitement kindles for the sake of his friend. “Genis, it’s _time.”_

Genis swallows down his apprehension. “They’re here, then?”

Mithos goes still. “...yes,” he says, eventually.

“I want to see them.”

Mithos’ smile flickers, and fades out for something melancholy, and filled with unfathomable age, a shade of almost-regret. “I don’t own you, Genis,” he says softly. “You can do what you want. Whatever you choose.”

“I chose you,” Genis reminds him. “I’m here right now, choosing you, _still._ But --”

“But that doesn’t mean I’m the only thing you choose,” Mithos says, and under the bitter, there’s acceptance that stings to hear. His friend’s attention is locked, once more, on the...pod. Genis doesn’t know what else to call it.

He tries to not look at Colette. He wants Mithos to get his sister back, of course -- the idea of losing Raine like Mithos lost Martel alone is enough to understand completely why Mithos is doing what he is doing, is enough to make Genis want to support him wholly -- but he also wants Colette to get her once-impossible dream of living to see a third decade. He’s been pleading with Mithos to find another way, but…

All he’s managed is a promise that, once Martel is back, they’ll try and figure out something for Colette. Mithos doesn’t want to wait for her for a second longer than he has to, not when he’s already waited so long for her.

Genis understands that. He _does._

It doesn’t mean he likes it. It doesn’t mean he wants to be here, watching when it happens.

“I’ll be back,” he says. Swears it, a promise.

“I guess we’ll see,” Mithos counters, too used to abandonment to trust words without actions to back them up.

“We _will,”_ Genis says to his friend.

And then, before Mithos can take the final word from him, stalks out, to reunite with his other friends.

-x-

It’s a funny thing, to look at Lloyd and see he hasn’t changed. He should look older, Genis thinks, taller, or --

\-- but, really, it’s barely been a month since Genis had left. Of course Lloyd hasn’t changed. That’s _him,_ and it’s all inside. It’s not like _he_ looks any taller.

He might look angrier, though. That’s okay. It just means he matches the judgement in Lloyd’s gaze, eye to eye.

“Genis,” Lloyd says, firm and even. That’s not the sort of greeting Genis would have expected from his lifelong friend -- maybe he _has_ really changed more than he thought. “It’s good to see you.” He tries for a smile, but doesn’t quite make it. “I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

Something small and wounded and sharp and _venomous_ pricks at the corners of Genis’ mind. “Mithos wouldn’t hurt me,” he snaps. Protests. _Snarls._ “He’s my _friend.”_

Lloyd raises a brow at him. “And I’m not?” Genis rolls his eyes, is halfway through a scoff when Lloyd holds his hands up placatingly. “Okay, I get it, you’re angry at me,” he says, and Genis _hates_ how calm he sounds. Hates every soothing syllable. “So, not me, then -- what about Colette? Is she not your friend too, Genis?”

The flames of anger are doused to coals by the ice of confusion and conflict. “Of course she is,” he says, before he really has time to think on how to swallow down a truth he doesn’t know how to lie around.

“Then are you just going to let Mithos do this to her, Genis?”

He swallows. His throat is tight and painful, and his vision swims. “I’m -- I’m not going to let him, obviously,” he hisses. “There’s still time -- I can get through to him --”

Even blinded by tears, Genis can’t mistake the red of Lloyd’s jacket moving closer to him -- warm weight on his shoulders, the top of his head, and he flinches as Lloyd pulls him into a hug. Freezes. Sinks automatically into the familiar warmth of his not-quite-brother. Bites down the sobs that want so desperately to escape. Tastes blood as his lips tear.

“Oh, Genis,” Lloyd sighs. “Did you really think you could do this alone?”

Voice a croak wrecked by tears, Genis says: “I have to.”

A pause. “You’re stupid,” Lloyd says, wonderingly.

Genis kicks him.

“All of the rest of you --” he spits. “None of you -- _none_ of you -- would have wanted --”

“To save Mithos?” Lloyd raises a brow. “Genis, it’s _us.”_

“And you’ve _changed.”_ Genis’ voice cracks, which is embarrassing. 

Lloyd sighs. “This journey has changed us all,” he murmurs eventually, and Genis can only snort in agreement. “Come on, Genis,” he says eventually, nudging Genis’ shoulders. “Let’s go save our friends. _All_ of them -- before it’s too late.”

He holds out his hand, and Genis remembers not just the last leap of faith he’d taken because of an outstretched hand, but the time he’d spent with Lloyd and Colette, his only friends, for the longest time.

_All of them._

He thinks of Colette, and he thinks of Martel, and most of all, he thinks of Mithos. He sniffs, and scrubs an arm across his face, wiping away the tears. “Right,” he says firmly. “Let’s go.”

Lloyd grins, and looks a second away from ruffling Genis’ hair. Somehow, he restrains himself. “You lead the way, Genis,” he says. “I’ll follow.”

-x-

They save Colette -- or rather, she saves herself. _Martel_ saves her.

Genis is there, and watching, as Mithos’ world shatters.

He falls to his knees, and screams, and Genis can only watch helplessly and wonder _how can I save this?_

 _How can I save_ him?

No time for thinking, no time for planning -- before he’s even got a handle on what’s going on, Mithos is lunging for Lloyd, and then his friends -- his two best friends, first and newest, oldest and -- and closest -- are clashing, Lloyd’s eyes wide as he frantically defends and dodges, clearly trying not to meet Mithos’ strikes with attacks of his own --

\-- and Mithos’ eyes are wide too, but not with panic, like Lloyd’s. There’s nothing but mania in Mithos’ blank, unseeing gaze, something feral and primal, and Genis chokes on a sob. He wants to curl up into a ball and cry.

But, most of all, he doesn’t want to stand on the sidelines and do _nothing._ He doesn’t want to watch his friends fight, doesn’t want to see only one of them walk away unharmed. See only one of them walk away _alive._

But, most of all, he wants to _save Mithos._

He’s lunging for the two of them before his own higher reasoning can kick in. Somehow, amazingly, as he darts between them, they both see him soon enough to pull back their swings -- he’d expected it from Lloyd, but it’s honestly a relief that Mithos is still paying enough attention to realise he _isn’t_ Lloyd, that he still cares enough to _not_ hurt Genis just to get at Lloyd.

“Genis,” he says -- snarls, really, gritted out through his teeth, “get out of my way.”

Genis swallows, and feels fresh tears welling up. “I promised I’d come back,” he says. “And I told you, I chose you, I choose _you,_ but --”

Mithos closes his eyes. He shudders. “But I’m not the only thing you choose,” he whispers. His sword clatters to the ground, and he follows it -- falling first to his knees once more, and then he’s on all fours and he’s crying, deep, body-wracking cries that have to come straight from his soul.

Genis rushes to his side as Lloyd warily steps forward to kick Mithos’ sword out of his reach, before prudently retreating just a little ways, as if to give them -- or at least Mithos -- some privacy.

“I chose Martel,” Mithos whispers, tear-choked and muffled into Genis’ throat as he tugs his friend into a hug. “I chose her, I -- I always chose her, so why --”

He breaks off around more shards of grief caught in his throat like splintered glass, but Genis knows him well enough to complete the thought.

_So why didn’t she choose me?_

His grip on his friend tightens. “She loved you, I know it,” he says fiercely, thinking of Raine. “She still loves you.”

Mithos shakes his head. “She hates me,” he says, and there’s wonder in his tone that has Genis wincing. “I don’t blame her,” he adds on with laughter barbed with hysteria made of sharpened wire. “Most of the time, I hate me, too.”

“Well, _I_ don’t hate you,” Genis declares loyally.

“We’ve already established that you have terrible taste in men, Genis,” Mithos mumbles, and whatever manic energy had possessed him to attack Lloyd has been traded out for what seems to be a deep, grief fueled depression, a lethargy. “Of course that extends to your friends.

Genis hesitates for only a moment before saying the only thing he can think that might help -- even as he acknowledges it might just make everything worse. “You said you always chose Martel, right? Well...maybe this is her way of telling you that she finally wants you to, you know...choose yourself?”

Mithos goes still in his arms.

“Maybe,” he says finally, and pulls back from Genis.

It’s still Mithos, still his friend, but his age is more apparent in his gaze than ever.

Genis holds his hand out to Mithos -- for once, reversing the tables. Mithos simply stares at the offered hand for a long moment, expression unreadable.

Finally, finally, he takes it.

Genis pulls him to his feet.

-x-

Mithos’ world ended, once.

He survived it.

It ended, again.

Somehow, he survived it, again.

(Even if he didn’t really want to)

-x-

“I should be dead,” Mithos says.

Lying next to him, spread out side by side on the grass at the outskirts of Iselia, Genis turns over to look at his friend. Mithos isn’t looking back at him -- so either he was talking out loud, or he was just...testing the words out.

“What do you mean?”

Mithos looks over at him, too. Gold strands of hair too short to stay tucked behind his ear fall over his face, caging the blue of his eyes. “I should be dead,” he repeats.

Genis thinks, turning the words over in his mind for just a moment. “Like...in general, or…?” _Something more specific?_

“Well, yeah, in general,” Mithos says, and some of that terrible numbness in his eyes sparks into life with amusement. “I mean, I’m like, four thousand years old.” Something pensive and -- yeah, ancient -- crawls into his gaze, suddenly as many miles away as Mithos is old. “I’ve...I’ve lived a long, long time, Genis,” he murmurs. “I _should_ be dead.”

A moment’s silence. “I disagree,” Genis says, finally and firmly, and Mithos jolts as he reaches down to hold his hand, eyes widening in surprise. “You’ve been alive for a long time, sure,” he says, “a _stupidly_ long time. But -- look at you!” He gestures at Mithos’ body, barely looking a year or two older than he does. “You’ve been alive for a long time,” he repeats. “But, Mithos -- I think you’ve only truly _lived_ about as many of those years as _I_ have.”

He’s always thought that Mithos’ eyes were something out of this world -- surely, surely, they must be what the eyes of a pureblooded elf must look like, like crystal remade into something breathing and alive and luminous? But in that moment they’re more seaglass than gemstone, and something in that glass _breaks._

“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Mithos says, and it seems like a nonsensical subject jump, and it _is,_ but Genis knows Mithos well enough at this point to keep up with him jumping from topic to topic, never quite capable of resting still in a moment. “More people than years I’ve lived, probably.”

Genis shrugs, and thinks of Desian Ranches and the entire Journey of Regeneration. “So have I,” he says.

The look Mithos shoots him is somewhere between wry and annoyed. “You’re fourteen,” he says archly. “It’s not hard for you to say that.”

“Once, I never would have thought I’d be saying that I’d killed even _one_ person,” Genis snaps. “It’s not _easy_ for me to say it, either.”

Contrite, Mithos backs off. “Sorry,” he says.

A breath. “I’m sorry, too.” A pause. “Is there...a reason you’re bringing it up?”

“Like I said,” Mithos says quietly. “I should be dead. Maybe Martel was right to leave. You said that maybe she wanted me to choose myself, for once, but what if she wanted me to choose myself in a different way? We’ve lived long enough, and all our lives have ever bought is tragedy. I should be dead.”

“Do you...do you _want_ to be dead?”

Those eyes are crystal again when they lock with Genis’, and they’re shining with tears. “I don’t _know,”_ Mithos whispers, broken broken broken.

Genis doesn’t really know how to respond to that, not without saying something dumb and making things worse, but -- 

It’s them. They have their own language. Wordlessly, he holds his hand out, and Mithos takes it swiftly enough the Genis knows he didn’t even think about it. At this point, between them, it’s instinctual.

He squeezes Mithos’ hand, tight. _I’m glad you’re alive,_ his grip says, _I don’t want you to be dead._

Mithos’ fingers interlace with his. _I’m glad I’m here with you,_ his grip says, _I’m working on the rest._

 _All of them,_ Lloyd had said once -- all of them they were going to save _all_ of their friends. The got over the worst of it, and now all that’s left is to heal. 

“I’m still working on some things, too,” Genis confesses. 

Maybe trying to lighten the mood, Mithos smiles. “I hope your terrible taste in men is somewhere on that list,” he teases, and Genis drops his hand.

“You’re terrible,” he complains.

“But you love me,” Mithos counters.

Genis can’t help his own smile. “Yeah, I do.”

He lays back down, and with a sigh through his teeth, Mithos resettles next to him. The mood between them is soft and lazy now, just like the clouds that drift across the sky. It’s a moment of calm inside a storm they’re still learning how to weather, and while nothing is perfect, they’re learning a little more everyday. The world has changed, but so have they.

It’s okay. They’re figuring it out.

Together.


End file.
